Clean Sweep

by Jane Heller

  “Right. Then once we’re out the channel, I want you to head us into the wind so I can raise the mainsail. Just keep the bow pointed southwest, in the direction of the Northport stacks. See ’em?”

  I took one hand off the steering wheel and shielded my eyes from the sun. Squinting, I looked across the Sound and spotted the stacks from the Long Island power plant that had become a familiar navigation point for sailors. “Yup, I see ’em.”

  Cullie hoisted the mainsail, then the staysail and the jib. “Okay, Sonny girl. Fall off,” he called out from the deck.

  “The hell I will,” I said. “The water’s freezing.”

  “No, matey. That’s a sailing term. I want you to fall off to port. Turn the wheel toward the east.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” I laughed, and did as I was told.

  Suddenly, the wind filled the sails. My pulse quickened just as it had the last time I’d seen them in all their majesty.

  “Turn off the engine,” Cullie cried, as excited as a kid at Christmas. “We’re under sail!”

  I shut off the diesel and waited to be enveloped by the eerie quiet that comes over a boat when its engine gives way to the power of the sails—a quiet that was punctuated, this time, by Bob Marley’s reggae melodies.

  Cullie kissed me as we stood together in the cockpit. “Let’s go below and we’ll plot our course,” he suggested.

  Once at the navigation station, we pored over Cullie’s charts. He showed me the latitudes and longitudes of the buoys and reefs we’d encounter along the way, and explained the route he had planned for us to take.

  “We’re about here,” he said, using his index finger to indicate our position on the chart. “We’re heading east out of the Jessup Harbor. Then we’ll pass the Stratford Shoal Lighthouse, sail outside the Branford Reef, and approach the Thimble Islands from the backside. There’s a channel that leads to a great anchorage between the four main islands. That’s where we’ll spend the night, okay?”

  “How could it not be okay? It sounds like a dream voyage, my Captain oh Captain.”

  Cullie turned on the Loran, his electronic, high-tech radio navigation system that allows sailors to determine their position at sea. He punched in the latitudes and longitudes of our waypoints—as well as our destination—on the Loran’s keypad, and showed me how the system calculated and displayed the distances between points.

  “Pretty fancy equipment for a purist,” I teased. “Didn’t you say wooden boaters eschew modern technology?”

  “Yeah, but I’m the kind of purist that isn’t crazy about getting lost at sea. That’s why this Alden schooner’s got a Loran. If we were to veer too far off our course, the Loran’s alarm would go off. It’s a good little toy.”

  “I’ll say. Let’s hope we don’t hear any alarms. I don’t need any more excitement today. Just being on the Marlowe with you on our first overnighter is excitement enough.”

  We were about three-and-a-half hours into our trip and had just passed the Stratford Shoal Lighthouse en route to the Branford Reef when hunger pangs began to overwhelm me.

  “It’s nearly noon,” I said, linking my arm through Cullie’s as we sat in the cockpit taking in the sights. “How about some lunch?”

  “What a brilliant idea,” he replied, and smiled. “Want some help?”

  “Naw. I think I can handle a couple of tuna sandwiches. While I’m down there, I’ll change the tape. What’s your pleasure?”

  “How about Peter, Paul and Mary? I’m a sucker for ‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’”

  “Your wish is my command, you old folkie. One more question: what do you want to drink with your sandwich? We’ve got beer, soda…”

  “Oh, say no more. Beer it is. What could be better than a nice cold Heineken on a day like this? Come to think of it, what could be better than a day like this?” He let out a “Wa-hooo!”

  I climbed down the hatch, my eyes trying to make the adjustment from the bright sunshine of the cockpit to the cozy darkness of the main cabin. When I stepped onto the teak floor and realized what I had stepped in, I screamed. I was up to my shins in water!

  I ran back up the hatch to tell Cullie.

  “There’s at least six inches of water in the main cabin,” I said breathlessly, trying not to panic. “I think the Marlowe is sinking.”

  “There you go again, Sonny girl. Miss Disaster,” he said. He was stretched out in the cockpit, enjoying the sun and sea. “The last time we went sailing, you accused me of murdering Melanie. Now you’re telling me my boat is sinking. You’ve got to learn not to imagine worst-case scenarios all the time. You gotta chill out, as they say.”

  “Yeah? Well I don’t know how to break it to you, mister, but you’re gonna chill out when you go below and find yourself in a boatful of cold water. I’m telling you, Cullie. It’s bad. You’d better come look.”

  “Sonny, I know my boat. I rebuilt it myself, remember? There’s no way anything could—”

  “This is not about your boat or your expertise as a boat builder or your manhood,” I cut him off. “This is about water in the main cabin. Just come. Now.”

  Cullie sighed, got up, and followed me down the hatch. He didn’t scream the way I did when he saw the water that I had accumulated in the main cabin. He did the macho equivalent: he said nothing. He just started doing, without so much as a word to me about what he was doing or why.

  “What’s happening?” I said as I followed him up to the cockpit.

  “Nothing’s happening. I’m just turning the engine on. I want to get the automatic bilge pump going.”

  “Oh,” I said. I was relieved. I assumed that the automatic bilge pump would pump the water out of the main cabin in no time and that Cullie and I would have our tuna sandwiches and beer and laugh about the whole episode.

  Wrong.

  “Shit,” Cullie said. “The engine’s not working.”

  “What do you mean, ‘The engine’s not working’?”

  “Just what I said. You saw me turn on the ignition. Nothing happened. The water in the boat must have disabled the engine.”

  “What about the automatic bilge pump?” I asked with growing dread.

  “No engine, no automatic bilge pump.”

  “Oh, God. Now what are we going to do?”

  “Alison, let me take care of this, okay?” I could tell he was just as worried as I was. “The first priority is to stabilize the situation and get the water out of the boat. Then I’ll try to figure out how the water got into the boat in the first place.”

  He grabbed the handle for the manual bilge pump and started pumping furiously. And pumping. And pumping.

  “I can’t fucking believe this,” he said finally. “The thing isn’t working. There’s no suction. Nothing.”

  To say I had a sinking feeling about the boat was too corny a pun even for me. But a sinking feeling was exactly what I had.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening,” Cullie said more to himself than to me. “The water’s coming in and my two pumps are disabled.”

  “Maybe you didn’t check everything thoroughly enough before we left the marina,” I said.

  “And maybe you don’t understand that what’s happening here has nothing to do with maintenance. This boat was in perfect shape when we left the marina. Someone tampered with it.”

  “This isn’t the time to be defensive,” I said as gently as possible. I didn’t want to wound the man’s macho pride in his boat, God forbid. You know men and their machines. But he had to face reality sometime. People weren’t perfect. Boats weren’t perfect either. “Maybe you missed something,” I said.

  “Alison, I’m gonna say this once more. My boat has been sabotaged. I don’t know how. I don’t know when. All I know is that I’ve got to fix it. Now.”

  Cullie went down below. I followed him. He found a flashlight and opened the engine compartment.

  “Shit,” he said. “There’s water coming up through the stuffing box.”

  I di
dn’t know what a stuffing box was, but I was sure the fact that water was coming up through it wasn’t good.

  “Now where are you going?” I asked.

  “To check the sea cocks.”

  He disappeared, then returned to explain that the sea cocks, too, had apparently been disabled. The result was that water was pouring in through the valves. The wood plugs he was going to plug them with would stop some of the water from coming into the boat, but not all of it.

  “Shouldn’t I call 911 or something?” I asked.

  Cullie gave me a what-are-you-kidding look, then said, “Tell you what you can do. Get Channel 16 on the VHF radio and call the Coast Guard.”

  “Oh, my God. The Coast Guard. You wouldn’t tell me to call them unless you thought we were in danger. Are we, Cullie? Are we in danger? I can handle it, really I can.”

  “Yeah, we’re in danger. Someone played with the Marlowe—big time. Someone who knows his way around a boat.”

  “But why would anyone want to—”

  I didn’t have to finish the question. It had suddenly dawned on me that Cullie was right. Someone did play around with the Marlowe. Someone who knew her way around a boat. Didn’t Bethany say, just the other night at Les Fruits de Mer, that Paddy Harrington had taught her everything she knew about boats?

  “It was Bethany,” I said aloud. “She did this.”

  “Jesus.”

  “She probably monkeyed with the boat while I was out grocery shopping yesterday.”

  “Maybe she also figured we had the manuscript and that the damn thing would go down right along with us.”

  “The manuscript! It’s in the compartment below the anchor locker!”

  “Yeah, well we don’t have time to worry about Melanie’s masterpiece right now. We’re gonna sink if we don’t get some help. You call the Coast Guard while I go and try to do something about this water.”

  Cullie ran off and left me alone with the VHF radio.

  “Hello, Coast Guard? This is Alison,” I said, not sure how to begin. I had never called the Coast Guard before, nor any other branch of our military, for that matter.

  “Coast Guard. Petty Officer Dunne speaking,” said a gruff male voice. There was nothing petty about our situation. I hoped the officer’s title in no way reflected his ability to rescue us.

  “We’re sinking,” I said. “There’s water coming in everywhere, and we need help—badly.”

  “Name?”

  “Alison Waxman Koff.”

  “No, the name of the vessel.”

  “Oh, sorry. The Marlowe.”

  “Type of vessel?”

  “A forty-three-foot, hunter-green John Alden schooner.”

  “What is your position?”

  “My position?”

  “What is the position of your boat?”

  “Oh. It’s sinking. Why else would I be calling the Coast Guard?”

  “No, no,” said Petty Officer Dunne. “The location. What is the location of your boat?”

  Now I was really stumped. We were somewhere in the middle of the Long Island Sound, but I had no idea where.

  “Hold on a second,” I said and yelled for Cullie.

  “Tell him we’re about five miles east of Branford Reef,” he yelled back.

  “We’re about five miles east of Branford Reef,” I told Petty Officer Dunne. There was so much crackling and static on the radio that I wasn’t sure if he heard me, so I said it again.

  “Did not copy, yacht Marlowe. You’re breaking up,” said Petty Officer Dunne, confirming my suspicions. “Switch to Channel 22.”

  “Sure, if you think Channel 22 gets better reception,” I said. I used to have the same problem with my cable TV. HBO came in great, while the Weather Channel was a mess.

  I switched to Channel 22 and proceeded to report the location of the boat for the third time. Then Cullie came running over to the navigation station and grabbed the microphone out of my hand.

  “This is the captain of the Marlowe. MAYDAY. MAYDAY. MAYDAY,” he shouted.

  MAYDAY? Oh, God. We were going down. And I wasted all that energy worrying about spending the rest of my life eating chipped beef on toast at the State Correctional Facility in Niantic. Boy, did being on the verge of going down in the Long Island Sound put things in perspective.

  “MAYDAY. MAYDAY. MAYDAY,” Cullie said again into the microphone. There was no reply. “MAYDAY. MAYDAY. MAYDAY.” No reply. Not even any crackling or static. “The radio has shorted out. Must be all that water.”

  “What are we gonna do?” I cried.

  “Get in the dinghy and abandon ship. The water’s coming in too fast to stay here.”

  “But Cullie. How can we abandon ship? This boat is your baby, your pride and joy. It’s your home, your—”

  “There’s an emergency kit in a canvas bag in the cockpit, next to the life preservers. Go get it,” he said, ignoring my words. “I’m gonna rig a marker buoy so the Coast Guard can find the boat if it sinks.”

  “But how will they—”

  “Just get the life preservers and the emergency kit, Sonny. Please.”

  We stared at each other for a second or two.

  Whoever came up with the observation “Silence speaks volumes” was right. Cullie’s silence said, “My beloved boat is sinking and so is my heart, but I refuse to go to pieces because I’m a Big Strong Man.” My silence, on the other hand, said, “I know how much you love this boat, Cullie, and I’d give anything in the world to save it for you, but there’s a part of me that wishes I had never laid eyes on you or your fucking boat.”

  I ran up to the cockpit and retrieved the emergency equipment. Inside the kit was a whistle, some flares, a space blanket, a signaling mirror, some canned foods (B&M Baked Beans, Chef Boyardee Ravioli, and Campbell’s Split Pea Soup with Ham), and a bottle of Demerol.

  “What are you doing now?” I asked Cullie when I turned around in the cockpit and saw him up on deck.

  “I’m dropping the sails,” he said quickly. “No point in pretending anymore. This boat’s going down and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  I could feel his resignation as he negotiated the slippery deck, trying to maintain his balance and his composure as he dropped the mainsail, then the staysail.

  He was about to drop the jib when he slipped on the staysail sheet, fell onto the deck, and howled in pain.

  “Cullie!” I cried and ran up on deck.

  “Jesus,” he moaned, clutching his leg. “I’ve broken it.”

  “Your leg?”

  “No, my cherry.”

  I stared at him. He scowled at me. Then he began to laugh. I couldn’t believe it. His boat was sinking and his leg was broken, but the man was laughing. He had made a joke in a time of terrible crisis. He had tried to mitigate his awful pain and suffering with a good line.

  “Cullie, my boy, I see I’ve rubbed off on you.”

  He smiled, albeit weakly.

  “Where does it hurt?” I asked, touching his leg gingerly.

  “Here,” he grimaced, pointing to his shin.

  I didn’t know a tibia from a fibula, so I didn’t even attempt to diagnose the situation. All I knew was that the boat was going down, its captain had a broken leg, and I was suddenly in charge of the rescue operation.

  “Okay, graceful. Now what do we do?” I asked.

  “Put a life preserver on. Then put one on me,” he instructed, then winced from the pain in his leg.

  I ran back to the cockpit for the life preservers and the emergency kit and carried them onto the deck, where Cullie lay on his side.

  I put on a life preserver, then rummaged around in the kit for the Demerol.

  “Here. Take some of these,” I said and handed Cullie a couple of pills.

  He swallowed the Demerol and reached for his life preserver, which I helped him put on and fasten.

  “Okay,” he said. “Now pull the dinghy close to the boat and cleat it.”

  I followed his orders and drew
the eight-foot Nutshell Pram that we’d been towing behind the Marlowe as close to the schooner as possible. Then I tied it securely to the boat.

  “Are you feeling up to moving?” I asked.

  “No choice,” he said. “Just drag me along the deck and help me into the dinghy.”

  “Drag you? You weigh a hundred and sixty-five pounds.”

  “Okay, don’t drag me. Help me drag myself.”

  I dragged Cullie along the deck of the boat, grateful for its slipperiness as I was able to slide him as well as drag him.

  I tossed the emergency kit into the dinghy, then lowered myself into the small wooden lifeboat.

  “Okay, Captain Harrington. Your turn,” I called up to him as I opened my arms to receive him. “Let’s go very slowly, very carefully. Take your time. Easy does it.”

  Cullie eased his way down into the dinghy, grimacing from the pain, but all in all maintaining an amazingly stiff upper lip.

  “Should I untie the dinghy and start rowing?” I asked, once Cullie had settled into the lifeboat.

  “In a second. I need to take one last look at the Marlowe.” He swallowed and gave the boat a long, hard look. His eyes filled with tears, which he made no attempt to hide. “I put every dollar I had into that boat,” he managed, choking back sobs. “And a whole lot of love.”

  “I know. I know.” I felt his sorrow. I identified with it. I had put plenty of dollars—and love—into Maplebark Manor, and it, too, had sunk. “We’ll be okay,” I said, trying to reassure myself as well as Cullie. “We’ll make it. We will.”

  “We will,” he echoed.

  “Is the Demerol starting to work?” I asked.

  “A little.”

  “Then what do you say we shove off?”

  “Okay, but first, there’s a red flare in the emergency kit. I want you to launch it.”

  I found the flare, but had no idea what to do with it.

  “Just shoot it into the air, like a gun,” he explained. “If the Coast Guard’s out looking for us, they’ll see it.”

  I fired the flare and watched it shoot into the sky like a rocket.

  “That’s about all we can do from here, Sonny girl,” Cullie said. “Time to go.”